The Many Mistakes of Sirius Black
by CharlotteBlackwood
Summary: This is a sequel to The Many Mistakes of Gabriella McPeak. Sirius is living in Grimmauld Place, alone with only the worst of his memories, much like Azkaban. He is free, but caged; vindicated, but only barely; and he has learned the woman he loved was killed brutally, thinking he was a murderer and traitor. Mistakes are made for many reasons. Sirius Black is living proof. SB/OC, M
1. The First Mistake

**A/N: This is the sequel to **_**The Many Mistakes of Gabriella McPeak**_**, requested by **_**EmeraldStorm7**_**, and thus dedicated to her! There will be a third part, in about sixty chapters, when I've finished this story! I strongly encourage reading Gabriella's segment first, so you don't get spoilers in case you want to go back and read hers.**

** -C**

Sirius could feel his whole body tensing as he stood on the steps in front of that accursed house. He thought he'd been done with the place when he left at sixteen. Never had he imagined he'd be back, not like this.

"All right," he sighed, touching the door. "All right."

He didn't want to open the door, but Albus needed Grimmauld Place, and Sirius needed to do something useful, even if it would be painful.

He deserved pain, he thought, recalling what happened to Gabriella. He bit the inside of his lip hard, unlocking the door with a tap of his wand and listening to the clicks until they stopped before going inside.

The first thing he saw was the troll foot umbrella stand just inside the front door.

"Bugger," he growled, fighting the urge to kick the thing over and looking up at the elf heads on the landing. If he hadn't seen it so many times, he was sure he'd feel the urge to vomit.

His childhood home.

At least he didn't have much in the way of things to move in, he mused. He decided he'd set up in his old room, and when Remus showed up with Buckbeak they could put him in the master bedroom.

The hippogriff, not Remus. Although maybe they could share it during the full moon, have a bit of company. That could be a bit of fun, Sirius mused, tearing apart his precious mother's things.

Sirius climbed the stairs, listening to the creak in the old stairs, thinking back to events held in the room on the top of the house when he was a child, trying to remember if Gabriella had been there, terrorizing James or something.

But he couldn't recall. Horrifically, when he was in prison he did have one very vivid memory of Gabriella, stabbing herself in the stomach with a butcher knife in the middle of his kitchen at the bidding of his psychotic cousin.

To relive that memory every day for twelve years, that along with losing Lily and James...

It wasn't a good time in Azkaban, but he supposed that was kind of the point. If he had been enjoying himself, it wouldn't have been much of a punishment.

He made it to the top to his own room, opening the door to his old bedroom, being struck by the pictures of scantily clad females on the walls, Muggle all, with Permanent Sticking Charms to defy his mother with. He laughed, running his fingers along one of the once-glossy photographs of a girl bent over a motorbike wearing practically nothing. What a strange thing, to think that he'd once thought this girl looked like Gabriella McPeak. Gabriella had been far more beautiful.

Sighing, Sirius dropped onto his dusty, dirty bed that desperately needed to be cleaned properly and he pulled out of the drawer of his bedside table some parchment and a quill. It took longer to find an inkwell that wasn't entirely dry, but when he did he began to make a list.

The start was to ensure that the place was cleaned up and made safe to live in. Sirius wasn't sure what all was lurking in the house, but he had a feeling none of it was friendly. There would be issues with air quality, perhaps, and they would need to catalogue any dark and dangerous things they found. Some of these things could be done with the help of the Weasley children, who were scheduled to come stay there soon to help him clean the place up. Others would need to be done before they arrived, by Sirius, Remus, Mad-Eye and the like. At least he could count on Mad-Eye and that magical eye to know what was in things before he opened them. There were plusses to Mad-Eye being a living meat puzzle.

The thought of meat brought back the image of Gabriella stabbing herself and he dropped the quill, pulling his legs up to his chest and burying his face in his knees, trying to calm himself.

It would hit him at the worst times, the thought of her bleeding all over him. Sometimes, when he was trying to hunt down Peter, he would be struck with the memories of the color going out of her pretty lips and he would cry himself to sleep on the spot, unable to calm himself, unable to think of anything else.

He had more memories now, of Gabriella, but none so strong as the ones he wanted desperately to forget. He clutched his hands into fists, trying to forget the way her blood smelled, metallic and sweet. And how sticky and warm it was in his hands, the look of shock she'd given him as she regained her own mind before she fainted in his arms.

It was the most terrifying moment of Sirius's life, easily. Losing Lily and James was heartbreaking, but nothing scared him more than thinking that Gabriella was going to die because he'd made her a target with his love for her.

He tried to compose himself. There was work to be done, and at least a bare minimum had to be accomplished before he could make himself sleep in this room at night. Pulling himself to his feet, Sirius began to wipe his eyes and take deep, calming breaths. He had nearly finished composing himself when he heard the doorbell, and then the shrieks he thought he'd left behind when he ran away from home.

"_Who disturbs the House of Black!_" screamed the voice of his mother, and Sirius rushed back down the stairs with no hesitation. He opened the door to find Remus standing there.

"Welcome to hell," Sirius said with a grin. "Help me with this portrait."

"_Half-breeds!_" Mrs. Walburga Black shrieked. "_Scourge of my flesh!_"

"Lovely to see you too, mother," Sirius said, raising an eyebrow at the large portrait of his mother that had apparently woken up at the sound of the doorbell.

"What is that?" Remus asked, horrified. She was still shrieking, practically foaming at the mouth with her fury.

"That is my late mother, Moony," Sirius said. "Here, you take that curtain, I'll take this one, and let's see if we can't shut her up."

It took the two men a few minutes to get the curtains closed over the portrait, but they managed it.

"Right, she's got to go, although I wouldn't put it past her to have done a Sticking Charm," Sirius groaned, exhausted, rubbing his eyes.

"You have a house-elf?" Remus asked, confusion and surprise in his voice.

Sirius turned and looked over his shoulder, and saw an aged, bowed old house-elf in rags.

"Kreacher?" Sirius said, laughing. "I would have thought he'd be dead by now, but I guess wonders never cease."

"Good-for-nothing blood traitor, back to disturb my poor mistress," Kreacher said, almost under his breath, as if he thought the two men couldn't hear him. Sirius raised his eyebrows. "Master has returned," Kreacher now said in an ironic tone, bowing even lower than he naturally did. "Kreacher is pleased."

Remus coughed, obviously not sure if he should laugh or if that would be inappropriate.

"Nasty half-breed, infecting mistresses house with his blood and his breath," Kreacher muttered quite audibly. Remus's eyes grew incredibly wide.

"Shut up, Kreacher," Sirius said firmly. The house-elf instantly silenced. Sirius grinned. "I've always wanted to do that. Well, if he's got to be here, maybe we can figure out how to get some use out of him. Did you bring your things, Moony?"

Remus raised a rucksack half-heartedly.

"I just wanted to check in for now," he admitted. Get things settled, maybe get the rest of my things before dinner, pick up some food while I'm out."

Sirius frowned. He hadn't thought about the fact that he wasn't really able to leave the house for anything now that he was in it.

"Right," he said with a nod. "Right, well, let me show you to a room."

He led him to one of the guest rooms on the floor below his, hoping against hope that it would be reasonably clean.

"I wouldn't open any drawers without someone else around," Sirius said. "Use a lot of caution. And that attached bath probably needs a miraculous clean before it's safe to use. We can get started on it right away, so you don't have to worry about it."

"What about your room?" Remus asked. Sirius shrugged.

"I don't think my mother went in at all after I ran away," he admitted. "Its' a bit dustier than how I left it, but it's pretty safe otherwise."

The two old friends spent the afternoon making sure that Remus's room and other spaces they would come in contact with most regularly were livable, and they found very few surprises, which they were grateful for.

"It looks like Kreature lives over here," Remus said as they were going through the kitchen and pantry. Sirius followed him and looked in, frowning at the little nest Kreature had made for himself.

"Well, at least we'll know where to find him if he causes trouble," Sirius muttered. "I was thinking about Buckbeak. We should have someone bring him in tomorrow, and put him in my mother's old room."

Remus snorted.

"Only you, Padfoot," he said. "I'll talk to Diggle about it. He'd be willing to do it, and I think Chara has some experiences with hippogriffs. He'll be in good hands."

At the mention of Chara Montgomery, Sirius swallowed, thinking once more of Gabriella, this time recalling the tale of her disappearance and death, as Chara had related it to him and Remus. He gripped at the kitchen table and felt as though he might collapse for a moment.

"Padfoot? Are you all right?"

He had to get it together.

"Fine," he said. "I just…. This isn't easy, living in this house again."

Remus obviously could tell he was lying, but he didn't press on the matter.

"I'm going to go get food for dinner," he said slowly. "And then I'll pick up my things. "Anything you particularly want?"

Sirius looked around the kitchen, wondering what he hadn't eaten in a while, what would taste especially good in his childhood home. What was so Muggle that it would scandalize the furniture?

His lips curled up at the corners into his signature smirk and he said, "Yeah, why don't you get cheeseburgers?"

They enjoyed their fast food that night with relish. Remus had always been fond of cheeseburgers, and Sirius was always fond of anything that would defy his family. It was maybe a bit childish, but childish in the most delicious of ways, and it was the only sort of thing, he knew, that would keep him sane while he had to live in this godforsaken place.

"We'll have to put out a warning about not ringing the doorbell until we can figure out what to do about my dear mother," Sirius mused, dipping a French fry into a little blob of ketchup Remus had put on his plate.

"I'll warn Dedalus," Remus said, nodding. "Actually, I'd better warn Chara too. She's the one who's likely to actually remember."

Sirius snorted. Diggle was a good man, a surprisingly good ally in a war, but he was also foolish and a bit…absentminded. He wished he could remember what it was Professor McGonagall had always said about him, but it had been so long ago….

Crawling into his old bed that night, Sirius felt a distinct sense of hatred toward the building that was already beginning to encase him like a cage.

Sirius woke up to the sound of his mother shrieking, and he rolled over.

"I thought I had left this behind at sixteen," I hissed into his pillow.

It wasn't so much that he was stuck in his childhood home that bothered him. It was more that it was almost a literal preservation of the place he had run away from, the place that held all of his worst memories.

All but one.

He shivered, and was instantly grateful that he was not, instead, living in the place he'd had during the war. Probably it was sold to someone else when he went to prison.

By the time Sirius got downstairs, Remus and Dedalus must have closed the curtains over his mother again, because she was quiet.

"I'm so sorry," Dedalus was saying. "Chara reminded me and I forgot and I-"

"It's fine, really," Sirius lied, rubbing his eyes. "Let's get Buckbeak up here."

"Where are you putting him?" Chara asked, amused.

"My mother's bedroom," Sirius replied wryly, and he relished the fact that she laughed at this.

Once Buckbeak was situated, the four of them sat down for tea in the kitchen.

"I would tell you it's a lovely house," Chara said with a shrug. "But it's really not, is it?"

"No, you're absolutely right," Sirius agreed, smirking. "It's a verifiable shit-hole."

"Sirius," Remus said sternly.

"Oh, come off it, Moony. This place is hell on earth. It's the unfortunate truth, since we have to live here. But it's the truth nonetheless. The fact that my mother has a demonic portrait of herself in the entrance only makes it that much worse."

"I took a look at it while you were getting Buckbeak situated, actually," Remus said, stirring sugar into his second cup of tea. "It's definitely a Permanent Sticking Charm. We'll see if anything can be done short of taking out the wall, but I don't think it's likely."

Sirius sighed. He had been afraid of this news, but he took it in stride. He was determined, while there were people visiting, to be a decent host, even if he didn't have a decent house to host in. After all, he was raised to be a proper host. That was really the only positive thing he could point to coming from his childhood. Lily had always commended him on his excellent manners.

Well, except where Gabriella was concerned. There he had been told off by everyone who knew the details of the thing, although he thought eventually even Lily and Remus took a kind of pity on him. Remus especially in a way, because he had known Gabriella in the way that Sirius had. He had loved her, he had possessed her, and she flatly turned him away. Perhaps she never hated Remus, but Sirius knew that the turning away when he actually got up the nerve to make a move and make himself feel like his need for her outweighed his thoughts of not being good enough for her.

Sirius became melancholy at these thoughts, and when Dedalus and Remus went off to see if there was anything they could do to make Buckbeak's food situation more viable, Sirius began picking at a spot on the table to avoid looking up at Chara, who was watching him closely.

After a long moment, she said, "You're thinking about her, aren't you?"

His head jerked up to look at her. He was stunned for a moment that she would realize this was what occupied his mind, but then, she knew and cared more about Gabriella than anyone else left in the Order except for him and Remus.

"Of course I am," he muttered, looking back down at the table. "There's not a day that goes by when I don't think of her."

Admitting it was almost a blow to his pride, because from everything he knew of her end, Gabriella died not only not loving him, but thinking him capable of unspeakable betrayal. And he loved her so completely, all those twelve years, and it just felt like he was the one being stabbed with that butcher knife to think of how his stupid, childish, selfishness had not only ruined any chance he'd had with her, but in the end ruined her as well.

"Was it my fault?" he asked, looking up at Chara's dark eyes and hoping she would tell him it wasn't, even though he knew such words could only be lies. "I killed her, didn't I? It's my fault they targeted her."

"She was targeted because she was close to members of the Order," Chara said slowly. "Your cousin's husband said as much in the trial. But…you were only a part of that. If it hadn't been because you loved her, it would have been because she was friends with the Potters. They didn't seem to know for certain what Remus's allegiances were."

Sirius could have laughed at this. He certainly knew that he'd had a hard time figuring out what Remus's allegiances were, as well.

"Tell you what," she said slowly. "Next time I come around, I'll bring my box. It's got news clippings, trial transcripts Dumbledore attained for me…. It's a veritable gold mine if anyone wants to study her."

"Why would they do that?" Sirius snorted.

Chara blinked at him.

"But they have. She was a mentally unstable pureblood who was tortured and killed by the Death Eaters, after Voldemort was defeated. She's famous. I get interviewed about her every time someone writes a book on the war."

This was such a strange concept that Sirius just stared at her, trying to wrap his brain around Gabriella, his Gabriella, becoming some sort of martyr symbol for the first war, a textbook trope, just another especially good war story.

She was so much more than that. She had always been so much more than that.

Sirius told Chara, as she and Dedalus were leaving not long after, that he would very much like to see her collection.

What harm could come in it?

And that was his first mistake.


	2. Going Through the Motions

There was sun. Of course there had to be sun. Sirius had not left the house in three days, so naturally the sun had to be out.

He could imagine himself out in the little grassy area between the houses, running in his Animagus form, chasing his tail and passing butterflies, falling onto his side and laying out in the brilliant light of the sun's rays.

He missed Hogwarts, the freedom of so much open space that he couldn't possibly be seen or recognized. But Remus had been keeping a close eye on him since it got sunny, so there was no real chance of escape.

"Couldn't I just go outside for five minutes?" Sirius whined.

"No," Remus said, not looking up from his book. "You know better than anyone how quickly you could be arrested or killed if you were seen and recognized by the wrong people. I don't want you to feel like I'm babysitting you, Sirius, but-"

"But it's exactly what you're doing," Sirius pouted, folding his arms across his chest.

Remus looked up at him and smiled just a little bit.

"Well, if you insist on acting like a child," he teased. "Yes, I'm going to treat you like one."

Sirius didn't find this amusing.

"Let's have lunch," Remus suggested with a sigh when he realized that Sirius was going to pout. "The Weasleys are coming tonight. You're going to need your strength."

Sirius snorted at this, but agreed, and they went to the kitchen and began to make ham sandwiches.

"I think," Remus said very solemnly as they sat down, "that we have a lot of work that the Weasley children can help with. The doxies, for one. Actually most of the drawing room should be handled easily enough. And there's cleaning the walls on the third floor. They're showing mold."

Sirius just nodded, not really caring if the house was never completely clean. Safe, yes. He wanted it to be safe for when the children came around, but he really didn't care if the unused rooms remained a sty.

Kreacher would probably be more comfortable that way, anyway.

"Do you want pickles?" Remus asked politely, and Sirius jerked out of his reverie, remembering the strange light in Gabriella's eyes the one time they'd had sex. How could he not have realized? That light had been there when they fought while Harry was being born, too, that light that was both horrifying and entrancing and made him want to possess her utterly.

"I'm sorry, what?" Sirius asked, shaking that thought of Gabriella coming undone beneath him from his mind.

"Pickles," Remus said, his face darkening. Sirius must have had an expression he used when he was thinking about Gabriella, because everyone seemed to know.

"No, thanks," Sirius said. "I'm going to make some tea. Do you want some?"

"Please."

He turned away from Remus, trying to get a grip on his thoughts. He could recall their first kiss, their lips meeting in James's basement while she sat on his lap. He missed her so much he could almost taste her.

It was strange to think of her dead, even though he'd resigned himself to the thought that he might never see her again when she went away to France. She never wrote him back once. He had mourned her then, as though she was lost to him forever.

The cruelest thing Bellatrix had done was not killing Gabriella, for at least a part of her had wanted to die for as long as he'd known her, but it was giving Sirius one last taste of her before taking her out of the world forever.

"Sirius, the kettle's boiling over."

Sirius swore and poured the tea, carefully cooling the kettle with his wand before putting it in the sink. He handed Remus one of the cups and sat down next to his sandwich.

"Sirius, she's gone. And I know that's difficult, but…she's gone. I realize that I've had longer to come to terms with it than you have, but she didn't love you. She didn't die loving you. She died hating you."

"That makes it worse," Sirius snapped. "Don't you see, Moony, that this is all my fault?"

Remus raised his eyebrows and picked up his cup of tea.

"No, actually," he said, a bit coldly. "I don't see. I'm rather under the impression that it's Bellatrix to blame, not you."

Sirius pounded his fist on the table.

"I pushed her to France. I couldn't get over her when she never wrote me back, and then when she was back I tried to win her over again. I made her a target, which led to Bellatrix putting her through horrible things, and then I was so caught up looking for Peter that I couldn't even…I couldn't…"

"She wouldn't have wanted you to save her, Sirius," Remus said, a bit more gently. There was a horrific silence as Sirius looked at Remus, wondering if he was talking about Gabriella's suicidal tendencies, or her hatred of him. He could find no compelling reason to continue this conversation. He pushed away his sandwich and picked up his cup of tea.

"I'll be in…in…"

Where would he go?

"I'll be in the study if you need anything," he then said darkly. And then he hurried off, not exactly storming out of the room, but certainly leaving as quickly as his feet could carry him. He wanted freedom from that conversation, from those memories.

Of course, there was no escape from the memories. There was never an escape. He could leave one conversation, but as soon as he sat down in his father's study, Sirius was thinking of her again, the way her hair felt in his fingers, the sound of her voice as he made love to her…. Everything was so fragile and beautiful and tragically wrong. He had always loved her, but never how he should have, and she stopped loving him because she could not see him as he was.

On a sudden inspiration, Sirius picked up a book off the shelf, a genealogy of purebloods. They had some excellent old ones, but his mother had bought new ones each time one of her children was finally listed. He grabbed the one from when Regulus was born and flipped through it, searching for the McPeak page.

There she was, Gabriella McPeak, two older sisters and newborn. Nothing was wrong with her yet. She had no troubles. She had nothing in her way. The world was full of possibilities then.

How did a girl with everything fall so far?

There was a knock at the door.

"Sirius?" Remus said. "The Weasleys are here."

Sirius did not respond, still looking at her name on the page. Remus poked his head in, frowning.

"Padfoot, if that book is what I think it is, you'd better put it away before I burn it. You're not going to sit up here sulking at that page until the war is over. I won't let you waste away like that."

Suddenly, Sirius felt as though he understood some of why Gabriella had been suicidal. There was something about pureblood expectation that was stifling, suffocating, and combined with the raw deal life had dealt her….

He half wanted to throw himself off a roof, too.

Still, there were appearances to keep, and Sirius knew that he had work to do, even if it wasn't the sort of work he would prefer. He put the book away, following Remus down to the kitchen, where the Weasleys were sitting around the table.

"Arthur," Sirius said, shaking the hand of the man at the head of the table. "Good to see you."

They hadn't really seen each other in a very long time indeed, and Arthur shook his hand with surprising vigor.

"You look remarkably recovered," Arthur said. There was something awkward inherent in their interaction, knowing that not so long ago, Arthur had been of the mind that Sirius was a crazed mass murderer out to kill Harry.

"Proper food and a bed to sleep in can do that," Sirius said darkly. Molly Weasley sniffed.

"You can't have had much in the way of proper food yet," she said. "You're skin and bones! I'll have to make a nice big dinner, start turning you into a human being again."

Sirius could feel his lips dancing into a sort-of smile, and he found the eldest Weasley child standing up to shake his hand.

"Bill, right?" he asked, recalling the red-headed man from the hospital wing that night when Voldemort rose again.

"Yes," Bill said, nodding. "I'll be here as well. I've shifted to regular bank-work, so I can be here. I'm needed here."

Sirius nodded, looking around at all the red heads of hair.

"Is this the whole clan, then?" he asked, trying to be good-natured. It wasn't that he didn't want to see them all, to meet them. They'd been good to Harry, he knew that. But he was in a lot of personal pain, and he didn't want them to see.

"No, Charlie, my second child," Molly said, "is still in Romania, and will be doing some Order work abroad."

Sirius realized then that Bill had not chosen to move home because he was sure he'd be more useful in England. He'd come home because he knew his mother would need the extra support. That was a good son, he realized. The sort of son he liked to think he would have been, had he not had a harpy for a mother.

"So," he said, turning to the other children, "I know which one Ginny is." They all laughed. "And Ron and I have met, obviously. You two must be Fred and George, then."

"Guilty," the chimed together, grinning.

Sirius could have sworn there had been another brother, someone who had owned the rat originally, but if there was Molly hadn't mentioned him for a reason. It seemed these were the only ones who would be living under his roof, so they were the only ones who mattered. If curiosity persisted, he could ask Remus about it later. He would know what was going on.

"Great," he said dully. "So, Remus has a list of things that need to be worked on in the house, obviously. Molly, perhaps you and him can go over it, decide what the children can help with and what we ought to do without them."

Molly seemed pleased that he was giving her this kind of power over the situation. After all, it was his house. Still, they were her children, and if she didn't want them clearing doxies, he wasn't going to try to force her hand on it.

"I'll show them to their rooms," Remus said happily. "I've gotten them all cleaned out this morning."

Sirius stood there for a moment and Molly Weasley came around the table and grasped his arm.

"Hermione Granger will be coming soon," she said, with false brightness. "She'll be staying here too, until the school year begins."

"Yes," Sirius said, recalling that vaguely. "Yes, she can share a room with Ginny."

"They would like that," Molly said, nervously. "That's what they do at the Burrow."

Sirius nodded. Finally, she said, "I know you knew my brothers. I just…I wanted to tell you that they held you in very high esteem, before…"

Before they had died.

He nodded sharply. He knew what she was getting at and appreciated the gesture, but there was only so much remembering of the first war that he wanted to do, that he could possibly allow himself. He tried not to think about the Prewetts, tried not to think about all the wonderful people who had laid down their lives to protect this generation.

It had all been for nothing.

Molly went up to learn the rooms, leaving Sirius alone in the kitchen, fiddling with one of the chairs that needed to be fixed. He would ask Remus to do it. Knowing him, he'd likely break it.

There was a knock on the kitchen door not ten minutes later and Sirius looked up to see Chara standing there with a box, smiling sheepishly.

"Remus let me in," she said, shrugging. "He told me you were down here, pouting."

Sirius gave her a weak smile and she entered the room, setting down the box between them, pulling out a large stack of newspaper clippings.

"It was very well-covered," Chara said as he took the stack from her thick fingers. "Society writer for the Prophet disappears and all that. Cuffe was distraught. He still doesn't like to talk about it. I think he fancied her."

He snorted.

"Chara, everyone fancied her, even when the pretended they didn't. Everyone except James. He just pitied her."

"He more than pitied her," Chara insisted. "I've read his letters to her at the hospital in France. He considered her a very good friend. Anyway, I read your letters to her as well. They were beautiful."

Sirius blinked.

"She never responded to them," he said sadly.

"She never got them," Chara said with a shrug. "Gillian never sent them along, never opened them or anything. She told me she thought it would have stopped Gabby from getting well as quickly, knowing that you were still…ah, messing with her."

Sirius felt his whole body tense at this. He was not messing with Gabriella. He had loved her, plain and simple. Of course, nothing was ever that plain and simple, but he did his best. He really did love her with all his heart. And he had thought, when she left for France, that deep inside she knew that.

"So she wasn't just trying to push me away," he whispered, holding up the first clipping, which was an announcement that Gillian Messner had reported her friend, Gabriella McPeak as missing. It made him feel slightly sick to know that if she hadn't been a pureblood who had a history of mental illness, Gabriella likely wouldn't have caused a fuss right away at all when she went missing. They would have assumed, that night, that she'd gone home with someone she'd met at the bar, because it said in the clipping that she was last seen at the Hog's Head. Dodgy place, of course. Everyone knew that. So a drunk girl was stupid and went home with someone without telling her girlfriend. So what?

But that girl was a pureblood, a girl with an unstable mind, a girl Albus Dumbledore himself stressed as important to find, for her safety. The more Sirius read of the clippings, the guiltier he felt. Gabriella's case did not include a single disappearance or death. Rylan, her Healer, was found dead, and the handful of old friends and almost-lovers who went looking for her all disappeared or were found dead.

Just as Gabriella was eventually found dead, in a Lestrange property, in pieces. The Auror department didn't know what they had, until they started testing the hair and found it to be from a missing girl.

"This is terrible," Sirius whispered. "It's like, nobody really cares except that they have to, because the story's too good to pass up on."

"The writer of these three," Chara said, touching three of the clippings that he'd spread out on the table, "is Rita Skeeter. She got her big break during the war, writing sensationalist pieces. She's known for tearing people to shreds. Everyone, really. No one is too good or too low to be punctured by Rita's quill."

Sirius blinked, glancing back over those three again. That didn't seem right.

"But these are all so complimentary," he said slowly.

"Exactly," Chara said softly. "They're the only ones like it I can find in her career save one, and that one was written before Gabriella disappeared, when they were working together at the _Prophet_. I think Rita admired Gabby, and I think she may have been the only person Rita Skeeter has ever admired. Rita's very jealous that I get to write the biography, but I've pacified her by guaranteeing that she will be interviewed. She worked under Gabby when she was first hired, you know. They were hired days apart."

He flipped through the articles discussing Gabriella's death, and what this meant in light of the war, the articles that connected her to him, and how he had destroyed her. She was fragile, and he knew it, the articles said. He used her, toyed with her, and when she had recovered in France he broke her all over again. Somehow, he'd even set up the whole kidnap-torture-murder scenario to be enacted if he was dead or captured, because – the author speculated – Sirius had a dark enough heart to not want her to exist if he could not have her.

Sirius's stomach turned when he looked at saw that this particular article had been a memorializing article written by her brother. He pushed it underneath and article covering the funeral.

"So you're writing her biography?" Sirius asked, trying not to feel too hurt about it. "I wish I could give you more information. But I guess interviewing me would put you in danger, wouldn't it? You know, my being a wanted criminal and all."

Chara laughed, and Sirius realized that he'd not heard her laugh since they were in school. It was a nice-sounding laugh, not the most beautiful he'd ever heard, but in the way he'd been going about life, it sounded strangely heartening.

"Perhaps if I think about it long enough," she said happily, "I'll come up with a way. Do you have any papers? A journal or anything that could serve as your testimony?"

Sirius pursed his lips.

"I don't know," he admitted. "I have all the letters she sent me when we were in school. Remus found them in my old house before selling it. Do you want those?"

"Yes," Chara said quickly. "Anything you've got. And if you want to write back-dated journals, I'd take those too. For your take on things. Perhaps…perhaps there could be a way to vindicate you."

Sirius nodded, but he didn't think so. He didn't think he deserved to be vindicated, where Gabriella was concerned.


	3. Responsibility

**A/N: Quick update on my life, for those of you not reading/reviewing any of my other work…my flash drive was broken last week and I've still yet to hear back how/if it can be fixed so until I know if I can retrieve those files, a few things (namely my Amy/Sirius trilogy) are on hold, and other things I wasn't too deep into a new chapter of like this story are being pushed to the foreground. Lucky you!**

** I hope it gets resolved soon.**

** -C**

"Excuse me, Harry's been what?"

"Attacked by Dementors," Tonks said in a voice that was entirely too calm. "Look, I really don't know the details, but Mundungus-"

"I'm going to rip out his throat," Sirius growled in a way that seemed almost feral. Chara smirked into her coffee in the corner.

Only Chara had a right to do that. Chara understood how important Harry was to him now. Of course, he'd been important before, but now Sirius had lost Lily and James and Gabby…. Sure, he had Remus, but Harry was all that was left of all he had lost, and Remus could never amount to any of what was gone forever. He was a good friend, but it wasn't the same.

"He was on duty until midnight," Tonks said, smirking a little. "Apparently there was some sort of deal he couldn't pass up, and he left Arabella alone with her kneazles to deal with the matter. Thankfully that was enough. Anyway, you know how it is with underage magic, usually, there's a warning. Improper Use of Magic issues it. But I guess Fudge jumped on the opportunity and tried to expel him."

It was pretty obvious what the purposes of that were. For one, it would separate Harry from Dumbledore's immediate influence, make him do something crazy like he did in his third year after blowing up his aunt, and then probably arrest him. Also, if he was expelled from Hogwarts, he wouldn't be allowed use of a wand. It would be snapped. Perhaps that thought made Fudge feel safer.

Dumbledore had gone straight to the Ministry, and Arthur was already there informing on what was going on.

"You should write to him, Sirius," Chara said softly. "Make sure he stays put, doesn't do something stupid."

Sirius wanted to believe that Harry was clever enough to understand the importance of staying put, but he knew she was right.

He wrote a quick letter to Harry and came back down to the kitchen, where Chara was the only one left present.

"Where's everyone gone, then?"

"Oh, here and there," she said, not looking up from her newspaper. "Things to do with Harry, you know. Fudge is really a fool if he thinks Dumbledore is discredited enough that he can actually get away with this. I mean, they're working very hard, but really, not hard enough if you ask me. If I were them, Harry would probably be in the loony bin by now."

Sirius sat across from Chara.

It no longer made him uncomfortable when she said things like that. For one thing, he was getting used to her company, and being around people in general – not just Buckbeak and letters from Harry. Somehow, having Chara and Remus around softened the pain of being cooped up in his childhood home, although how long it would take for him to start really feeling trapped he didn't know. It was bound to happen sooner or later.

"Anything good in there?" he asked, nodding at her paper.

"Not really," she snorted. "There hasn't been anything good in years, and it's only gotten worse with Fudge's paranoia."

"I bet Rita's having a field day, though."

"Strangely," Chara said, tapping her finger to her lips, "Rita hasn't written anything in a long time. I can't quite figure it out, you know, because she lives for ruining people. You're right, she ought to be eating up this environment, and you would think Fudge would want to get her on his side. However nutty she is, people do seem to believe her. I've thought about checking in on her, making sure she hasn't had an accident or something. She likes me because I was friends with Gabby."

Every time Sirius thought he was getting better, that he could think about Gabriella without feeling a sense of pain and loss and guilt, someone else would mention her in conversation and he would feel an urge to cry and vomit and throw things across the room. He gripped the table, trying to play it cool, but he knew that Chara could see his struggle. She was one of the more perceptive people he knew. A moment later she took one hand off her paper and set it on top of one of his comfortingly.

"I'm not going to lie and say you'll get used to it, or get over it," she said. "But it will get a bit better, a little bit easier, as you start to come to grips with it and know there was nothing you could have done."

She kept saying that, that there was nothing he could have done. But Sirius would lie awake at night thinking of all the things he could have done differently, from barging in and saving her instead of going after Peter to being faithful and attentive to her when he had her as his own. There were dozens of things he had come up with that could have saved her, so many he had thought a few times of making a list. Not that it would have done much good, but it made him feel a little better, knowing that he was thinking about it, serving his penance.

"Sirius?"

He turned and Chara took away her hand, turning back to her paper. It was Remus.

"Yeah?"

"Did you send Harry a letter?"

Sirius nodded and Remus came in and sat down. Perhaps Remus had been expecting him to be the irresponsible godfather Sirius often felt like.

"I hate the feeling that there's nothing more I can do," Sirius sighed, glancing back at Chara, who seemed engrossed with the newspaper. Sirius knew that she was actually listening to them, perhaps not even reading the paper at all, but he appreciated her feigned lack of interest in his talk with Remus. She was sensitive in ways her brother had never been. Perhaps this was something she'd always had, or perhaps it was something she had learned over the years, living in the aftermath of a war that had changed her life forever. He thought often of how much he had lost, but she had lost just as much.

"This is how war is, Sirius," Remus said with a shrug. "You should know that by now."

"I did more when I was a teenager."

"But there was still plenty you couldn't do," Remus said. "Don't forget all the things you couldn't accomplish. When the war is this quiet, it makes our jobs harder."

"And easier," Chara chimed in casually. The men blinked at her and she looked up at them. "Well, it makes things a bit easier because the Death Eaters are being very quiet, right? So we're not combatting the sort of fear you lot were in the first war."

Chara made some good points, but it was more complicated than that. Sirius had noticed in meetings that she was only just beginning to understand the intricacies of war. It always seemed so simple, watching Muggle films. There was always someone else to think of the heavy stuff, to tell you what you didn't have to figure out for yourself.

"They're not going to mess with Harry," Sirius said, determined. "If I have to walk into the Ministry myself-"

"You'd be arrested before you too two steps," Remus said impatiently. "You're not going to caution Harry not to be stupid only to turn around and be utterly stupid yourself."

"Well, there's a positive to him being expelled," Chara said with a grin. "He could always move in here with you, keep you company. Who knows, you could be fugitives together."

Sirius grinned.

"Don't encourage him, please," Remus said with a groan, rubbing his eyes. "He's bad enough without thoughts like that. Now he's likely to start planning their adventures for when they're both convicts, and next thing you know it won't be this house they're sharing – it'll be a cell in Azkaban."

"Oh, don't be ridiculous," Chara said, turning back to her paper. "Sirius won't be taken back to Azkaban. He's going to get the Dementor's Kiss, remember?"

And just like that, she went from lightening the mood to killing it entirely and Sirius had half a mind to excuse himself from the kitchen and go throw things upstairs in the attic. But then, he wasn't sure what all was in the attic and decided it was better to wait until they'd properly cleaned it to start throwing things up there. He didn't want to wake up something angry and dangerous.

"Oh, for Merlin's sake," Remus grumbled. "Tea, anyone?"

Sirius nodded, picking at a small dent in the table, wondering if the old dining room was as big as he remembered. It would probably be safe to throw something in there. Perhaps the family china. He'd always wanted to throw those hideous plates at something.

A few minutes later, Remus was setting tea in front of Sirius, and Sirius grunted his thanks while Remus set another in front of Chara. She barely acknowledged the cup, nodding as Remus sat back down with his own tea.

The waiting was the worst bit.

"News!" Tonks finally cried, running down the stairs. "I've got news! Oh, by the way, I just ran into Molly. She wants a shopping list. She's trying to stock the pantry, says there's not enough here to keep them all fed for the week. Anyway, Harry's not been expelled or anything. He's getting a hearing with Madam Bones and then I'm sure he'll be cleared and back to Hogwarts. Oh, is that tea?"

Remus poured her a cup and she sat down next to Sirius happily as Remus went off to check the pantry for a list for Molly.

"Mad-Eye has me working on a way to get Harry here," Tonks continued cheerfully after a long drink of tea. "I've got to come up with a way of luring the Dursleys away so we can break in and get him out. I've got a few ideas. Have any of you met them?"

"Yes," Chara and Sirius both said, and Sirius frowned.

"Well, I mean, sort of," he admitted. "A very long time ago. Chara probably knows them better."

"I've watched them," Chara said with a small smile. "You've done as much. And Harry's told you about them, Remus said."

So Sirius and Chara began explaining the Dursleys as best they could to Tonks, who quickly came up with a few ideas for luring away the terrible Muggles, all of which Sirius was immensely proud of. She was clever, taking after him and her mother and…. Well, the whole Black line was clever and talented. Sirius hated admitting that because it meant admitting that his mother and father and brother were all clever, although perhaps not so much as himself. There was no denying that Bellatrix was clever, and Narcissa was in her own way, although she hid it well.

Tonks left not too long after, and the voice of Hermione Granger was heard in the stairwell, timid.

"Sirius?" she said. "I'm sorry, I don't want to shout."

"Yes, Hermione?"

"Well, Harry's sent letters for you and me and Ron and I think he expects replies, because Hedwig won't leave."

Sirius turned to see Hermione coming off the bottom of the stairwell, holding out a letter in her hand. Remus frowned.

"What happened to your fingers?" he asked, concerned. "Was it something in the house?"

"Ah, no, it was Hedwig," Hermione said, frowning as the owl flapped in after her, looking ferocious.

Sirius quickly took the letter from Hermione, opening it to find Harry's writing, a bit of a scrawl with surprisingly dark ink. He was upset, perhaps even angry at everything that was happening to him. Sirius's eyes grazed the words and he sighed.

Harry wanted answers, wanted to know what was going on, but Albus had given very specific orders not to tell him anything he didn't need to know. Sirius didn't fully agree with the orders. After all, Harry had fought Voldemort more than most of the adults in the Order. He deserved to know a few things.

"You and Ron haven't replied?" Sirius asked.

"No," Hermione said, shrinking away from Hedwig, who was pushing her way through to Sirius. "Careful, she's probably going after you next."

"He wants a reply," Sirius sighed. "I just…don't know what to say to him. We can't give him proper answers."

There were some rules Sirius would be willing to break. For the right reasons, he would risk his own safety and sanity, for example. But he was not willing to hurt his godson, the last bit of James and Lily left in the world. If Albus said it was dangerous for Harry to know more than necessary, then Sirius had to trust him.

"You can't tell him anything, Sirius," Remus said slowly, frowning at Hedwig, who had begun to peck at Sirius's fingers. Chara was simply sipping her tea, smirking around the rim of her cup. "You know that."

"Of course I know," Sirius said. "Go on, Hermione. Go back upstairs, see if you and Ron can find a way to write without saying anything. And get Molly to look at those wounds, will you?"

Hermione nodded, and as she hurried up the stairs Hedwig hesitated, clearly uncertain on who to pester now that the three objects of her attention were in different parts of the house once more. Hedwig decided to follow Hermione back upstairs, and Remus took his leave, going upstairs to get some sleep in one of the guest rooms. Chara set down her teacup.

"What are you going to tell him?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "That ruddy owl won't leave us alone until we say something, but…what to say? I'm not very good at deception."

Chara snorted.

"Sirius, you were always excellent at deception. If I recall correctly, it took two incredibly intelligent girls to eventually see through you."

He got up and poured out the rest of his tea, watching the dark amber liquid swirl down sink, into the drain. Would the rest of his life be a reminder of what he had done to Gabriella, an attempt to atone for his part in her pain and her death? While he would have been the first to say he deserved it, he didn't think he could live like that, year after year, plagued by reminders of what he had done.

"I'm sorry," Chara said. "That was cruel of me."

"Cruel but true," he said, rinsing his cup. "Chara, I'm not seventeen anymore." He turned to face her as he set the cup on the counter. "Twelve years in Azkaban changes a person."

"Does it?" she asked, standing. "Some ways, perhaps, you have changed. But in a lot of ways, Sirius, you're still exactly the same as the day you were taken away. No, you're not the same as you were at seventeen, but at twenty-one?"

He frowned looking down at his hands.

"A lot happened between seventeen and twenty-one."

A war, Gabriella's…madness, Lily and James getting married, Harry's birth, Bellatrix torturing Gabriella….

Of course, as he reminded Chara, Harry was something very different. He was a godson, almost family. And one of Sirius's greatest failings within his own family – and his greatest boon with the Potters – was that he never lied to them. Family were people who didn't lie to each other, as far as Sirius was concerned. For better or worse, the only way to be that close to someone was to tell the truth.

That was where he went wrong with Gabriella. He had been young, stupid, and he'd half-believed that if he could just lie long enough that she feel in love, when it was time to tell her the truth she would stay. He really had first kissed her with the best of intentions, the best ones he'd ever had. With things falling apart beyond repair with Coral, building something with Gabriella seemed the most logical thing to do.

He only wished he could have told her, made her see how much he really did love her. But by the time everything happened, he doubted she would have believed him. And he couldn't blame her. He would have let go much sooner if someone had treated him like that, put him through that hell.

"I'll talk to Albus before I send anything," he said. "It's a delicate balance, because the boy obviously is desperate for news. But I did promise to play by the rules."

Chara nodded, finishing her tea. She got up and rinsed her cup and for a split second, looking at her fingers, Sirius was reminded of her brother, Vin, who had died looking for Gabriella after she'd gone missing. Vin and Sirius had never gotten along, but the mess with Gabriella had only made things worse.

Sirius should have gone looking for her, too. He should have looked for her instead of Peter, and maybe he could have saved her. Or maybe he would have died trying, too.

There was no fair way to judge the past, he knew. If he had gone after Gabriella, what would Peter have done? There was no changing any of it, but that didn't mean he didn't lie away most nights, wishing he could have done anything at all to fix it.

"I'd better be going," Chara said, smiling at him, her round face so full of kindness that he read as pity. "Take care of yourself, Sirius."

He watched her go and wondered how to do that, to take care of himself.


	4. In Memory

"Well?" Tonks asked with shining eyes. "What do you think?"

Sirius picked up the invitation she had slaved over and he frowned down at it.

"They really have these things, these Best-Kept Suburban Lawn contests? This is believable?"

"Yes," she said sniggering as Sirius handed it to Remus for inspection. "I did a bit of research into contest records to pick a title that sounded believable. But how does it look?"

Sirius and Remus exchanged bewildered looks and Sirius just shrugged.

"It looks very nice, Tonks," Remus said kindly, passing it back to her. "How are you transporting it?"

"Well, I thought about sending it by post," she said reasonably. "But I would have to be careful where I sent it, so that it was properly postmarked. And then I thought, well, maybe this place would deliver by hand, right? I could easily have someone slip it into their post delivery. We've got Squib friends in the service, or there's always Arabella Figg. She could put it into their mail slot while they're sleeping. They'd never suspect a thing."

Remus nodded, saying it was a very good idea. Sirius rather thought that old Figgy was having a lot asked of her lately, from keeping Dung in line to keeping an eye on Harry. At least the task of slipping a letter into a mail slot was a fairly small ask by comparison. Sirius wished he could be allowed to do such a small, simply task – anything to get out of the house. But he knew that he would never be granted such a request.

"Is the ink dry?" Remus asked.

Tonks nodded, carefully placing the invitation into a thick, official-looking envelope.

"Can I at least lick the adhesive?" he asked bitterly, and Tonks gave him a knowing look as she handed him the envelope. It was a pathetic request, he knew, but as he tasted the bitterness of the adhesive on his tongue, it felt good just to be a small part of the rescue mission of his godson.

His hands shook as he gave Tonks back the envelope, wishing there were something more, some other small thing he could do. But Tonks took the envelope up to the drawing room for Dedalus to deliver it to Arabella.

"It'll be alright, Sirius," Remus said softly. "Harry will come away alright. He'll be here soon."

Sirius nodded, starting the kettle. That was one thing he could do for the order – make tea. Tonks would be back downstairs any minute, but Sirius wanted to be alone. He wanted a safe place to cry, because all he could think about was how little he had been able to do already. The little he had done in the last war, as he saw it, was cancelled out by how much he was to blame for the losses of all the people he had cared about most.

"Yes," he said, smiling weakly and sitting down as he put tea bags in the cups. "Yes, soon."

"Sirius," Remus said softly, "I know how much you want him here, but he needs to go back to Hogwarts. You know that, don't you?"

Sirius put on his best grin, the one he had used fooling girls back in the day when all he wanted to do was walk away from them.

"Of course I know that, Moony," he said. "I'm not totally oblivious to reality, you know."

Just because he lived in memories. Just because he had a hard time holding the moment, the here and now. It didn't mean he was totally out of touch with the present.

But Sirius would have given anything to have Harry stay with him, keep him company. It would be like living with James again, except no parents, no rules, and plenty of dark and dangerous things in the house to entertain themselves with. Of course, Remus would drop in frequently to spoil their fun, but that would only make it even more like old times.

But he could not say such thoughts out loud, not to anybody, because no matter how badly he wanted them, he knew he could not want them. He knew Harry had to go to school, that Harry had to be with his friends and learn, just as Sirius had done at his age.

"Right," Tonks said, coming back through. "I'm off for now. Remus, you're going on the rescue, right?"

"Yes," Remus said softly.

Sirius bit the inside of his cheek as he tried not to be angry at Remus for his luck. Dumbledore thought that it would be good to have a couple of familiar faces there, and so he selected Remus and Mad-Eye, even though Remus hadn't volunteered like just about everyone else in the Order. Oh, he'd wanted to go, naturally. But no doubt he'd thought Sirius would have been offended had Remus volunteered to go.

Not that it mattered. Remus was still going, and Sirius was still staying where he was.

As Order members left to live their own lives, get sleep, have dinner or a drink at the pub, Sirius found himself waiting for Remus to go to bed, pouring himself a bit of firewhiskey.

"I'll take one of those, if you don't mind," Remus said wearily.

Sirius was mildly surprised. Remus rarely drank, but Sirius poured him a glass anyway, pushing it across the table to Remus's waiting hand.

"You don't have to stay up and babysit me, you know," Sirius said, trying not to sound too bitter. "I don't hate myself and my situation enough to harm myself."

Remus tensed, and Sirius instantly regret the word choice. In his mind's eye he could easily recall the small, fragile body of Gabriella in a hospital wing cot, unconscious, just before they sent her to France. Even knowing it was a memory, not real, his whole body ached to touch her, hold her, kiss her, heal her.

His hand squeezed the glass slightly, and he tried to remind himself that she was gone, that she wasn't coming back, and that it was his fault.

"Don't," Remus said firmly, and Sirius looked up, confused.

"I wasn't actually going to."

"I mean don't sit there blaming yourself," Remus said. Judging by the way Remus's jaw tightened, he'd spent a fair amount of time blaming himself for her death, too. "There wasn't anything anyone could have done."

"I could have saved her," Sirius said softly. "It's my fault. I ruined her, Moony."

"How?"

"By loving her."

Remus shook his head and took a sip of the firewhiskey. Sirius downed his own glass and poured another.

"Don't do this, Sirius, honestly," Remus said, reaching out for the bottle, but Sirius pulled it out of his reach, hugging it to his chest. "Look, nothing you did particularly helped her, but she was broken before you and she would have probably still struggled without you. If it wasn't Bellatrix, it would have been something else. She was…. Her troubles ran deeper than any of us can take credit for."

There was a ring of truth to that, but Sirius closed his eyes and he could still feel her breath on his mouth, the burning of her touch. He exhaled slowly and forcefully through his nose.

"If I could have just let her go," Sirius whispered, "Bellatrix would have left her alone. She would have been allowed to keep healing. And someday she might have been truly happy. But I couldn't…I couldn't let her go and I ruined her, Moony."

"Don't put it all on you," Remus said, with a surprisingly bitter laugh, and Sirius's eyes flew open again. Remus looked slightly sick as he gripped his glass with white knuckles. "Don't forget, I couldn't let her go either. And she was in Lily and James's wedding. Bellatrix didn't kill her because of you. She killed her because she was looking for information on the Order."

Sirius just shook his head, unable to keep himself from thinking that if his desire for her hadn't led Bellatrix to exert influence in the first place, they wouldn't have had such an easy time getting their claws into her. He knew Remus would say he was being silly, so he said nothing, swirling the cup around and around.

"Where d'you think she'd be now, if…."

If neither of them had touched her.

"Likely married to that therapist," Remus said hollowly. "With a few kids and everything she needed to be happy."

Sirius thought – or rather selfishly wished – that she wouldn't have really been happy. As much guilt as he felt for loving her, he would have hated for her to be happy with anyone but him. But then, the cynical voice in the back of his mind reminded him that she wasn't exactly happy with him, either.

"She was perfect," Sirius whispered. "Wasn't she?"

Remus said nothing for a long time, just staring at his mostly-empty glass. After a long silence he said, "Yes. Perfect."

"The way her hair smelled."

"Strawberries."

"Yeah. And how her skin was so pale it glowed."

"Mmm."

Remus's eyes were miles away, and Sirius knew that they were both recalling the perfection of her skin, the way it felt under trembling fingertips, the way it tasted, the warmth it exuded. Sirius closed his eyes, recalling with perfect clarity that day in his kitchen, the feel of her wrapped around him.

"What was it like?" Sirius said.

"What?"

"At the wedding."

"Sirius."

"Fucking her."

"Sirius, you don't want to have this talk."

"No, I do," he said, opening his eyes again to see that Remus now looked horrified and embarrassed. "I know it's not the sort of thing we've talked about since school, and I know you never liked to join in on those conversations, but this isn't like that. I…" He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply through his nostrils. "The only time I ever had her, she was being controlled. It wasn't…it wasn't really her, and I need to know…."

They sat in a long, tense, stiff silence and Sirius began to fear that he was pushing Remus too hard on a painful and sensitive topic for both of them. He worried Remus wouldn't want to speak about her ever again, never mind answering the question.

"It was all a bit of a blur," Remus finally said, scratching the back of his neck. "I'd definitely had too much to drink, and you know how just touching her seems to make the room spin even when you're sober."

Sirius hummed in agreement. He had loved that about her, how intoxicating and exciting it was just to be physically close to her. He'd never bothered wondering why. Once he'd assumed it was her vitality, when they first met, but that was before he knew how intent she was on dying.

"I remember," he continued, "that her body felt a bit cold to me. I remember that she felt…tight. Really tight." Sirius hummed again, and Remus continued, his voice shaking, "I remember that she hardly made a sound."

"Really?"

That seemed odd to Sirius, who recalled her moaning and gasping when he touched her, when he felt her. Was that a difference in men, or the fact that she was under Bellatrix's influence?

"Yeah. And I remember…when we kissed, it was like…like we were both hungry, desperate, and then in the morning…."

Sirius opened his eyes and saw Remus was wiping away tears hastily.

"She never loved me, Sirius," Remus said softly, pushing away an empty glass and standing. "I don't think she could, not after she met you. Even when she hated you, she loved you. I know you think you ruined her, but if you could have changed and she could have healed…."

"If."

"I know, it's a lot to have asked of either of you. But you two would have been so happy."

Sirius shivered as Remus left the room. He wanted to believe that, wanted to think that he hadn't totally destroyed the only woman he ever really loved. But after so many years, he couldn't.

The next night, Sirius fought the urge to pour himself another drink as the rescue party assembled in his kitchen. Chara also arrived early, sitting down with him at the long table as Mad-Eye gave them instructions and Tonks cut in periodically with cheeky comments. They'd just heard the words "Constant vigilance" for the fifth time when Remus pointed out that they were going to be quite late and possibly miss their window if they didn't get moving soon.

"Gone," Chara said, her word echoing in the nearly-empty kitchen. Sirius hummed in acknowledgement. "Remus said Harry live somewhere in Surrey?"

Sirius nodded. It didn't take much to recall that night two years ago, wanting just to have a glimpse of his godson before going off to track down Peter. He couldn't resist a look at Lily and James's boy. So eerie, in that darkness, how much Harry looked like James. For a moment he'd thought he was imagining him, that Harry couldn't possibly be Harry.

"He also said you two had a chat last night, wouldn't say what about, but he blushed and said he was worried about you, so I assume it was about Gabby."

Sirius shifted, not meeting her eyes as he thought of how Gabby looked at the last function they both went to, a Christmas party if he remembered correctly, and how beautiful she was when she smiled. He could recall what it felt like to hold her when they danced, how warm her body felt against his fingertips, how soft and small her hands felt in his.

"Just comparing," he said bitterly, with a forced ironic smile. "You know how we boys are."

"Doubtful," she said, her lips twitching. "Remus wouldn't have indulged that kind of thing, especially not about Gabby. He still worships her, you know."

Oh, he knew. Sirius could hardly blame Remus, and in spite of the kinship they felt over loving her, Sirius never stopped feeling jealous of the way Remus loved her. Pure, devoted, uncomplicated. If Sirius had just managed to love her that way everything would have been alright.

"I needed to know," Sirius said, scratching at a scorch mark on the table. Perhaps it was left over from a curse his mother shot at him at dinner once. "You knew that they'd slept together?"

"Of course," Chara said. "We talked about it not long after she died. He feels the guilt too, you know."

Sirius snorted and said, "What has he got to feel guilty about? He's not the reason the Death Eaters already had claws in her."

Chara's gray eyes were sad and far away as she sat in silence for a long moment. Finally, she looked at Sirius and said, "Remember how I told you that my brother and Vin and Irving all went looking for her when she went missing?" Sirius nodded. "Remus didn't."

"Remus had other things on his mind."

He felt guilty for that as well, knowing that if he'd just been the Secret-Keeper like they'd agreed Remus wouldn't have gone through all that loss at once, and he wouldn't have been left all alone.

"Yes," Chara said softly. "And you're right, that's probably why he didn't go after her. But he's convinced himself that it must have been some latent bitterness, trying to get back at her for rejecting him."

Sirius blinked and said, "But that's mad! I mean, this is Remus we're talking about. He's not got a vindictive bone in his body, and I can't imagine him ever, ever wanting something bad to happen to Gabby, even subconsciously."

"No, but the guilt won't go away. If he'd gone after her, he'd probably be dead now, too. And if you hadn't loved her, she would still probably be dead."

Sirius felt a stab in his chest at this honest and probably truthful assessment.

"If I'd loved her right," Sirius said slowly, pointedly. "If I'd changed—"

She was actually smirking at him. He felt the urge to hit her, but he didn't move, and she said, "Sirius, if you could have changed, you would have. You wanted her."

He still wanted her, more than anything else he had ever wanted in life. Perhaps Chara was right, and perhaps he never could have changed, but if that thought was supposed to make him feel better, less guilty, than it wasn't very well designed. It took absolutely no effort at all to recall the image of Gabriella plunging a butcher knife into her stomach at his cousin's request, seeing her collapse in a growing pool of her own blood on his kitchen floor, feeling the utter helplessness as he tried to stop the bleeding long enough to get help, long enough to keep her alive.

"Sirius?"

They turned their heads to see Molly Weasley poking her nose into the kitchen.

"Molly."

"Oh, hello, Chara!" Molly said brightly. "Sirius, the meeting will be starting soon, and I'd like to get a few things on before it starts because they'll need some time to marinate."

"Of course," Sirius said, feeling his face fall into a familiar, cold, expressionless set, and Chara's eyes narrowed at him.

"Is there anything I can help with, Molly?" Chara asked.

"No, no, the real help will be needed after the meeting. Are you not sticking around again?"

Chara once again made her apologies, said that she would be unable to make the dinner as she had a deadline for her publisher and really wouldn't make it if she stayed too long. Molly expressed, as usual, what a pity it was, and Sirius ignored them both, scratching away at the scorch mark and thinking of the way Gabriella's eyes glowed in Lily and James's sitting room not an hour before Harry's birth, as he pressed her against the wall and kissed her, swearing to himself silently that he would never fail her again.

Such a brief and beautiful moment that had been. And recalling it left him feeling nothing but emptiness.


End file.
